Reviews

GSA: Suor Angelica and Dido and Aeneas
ODU Theater, March 9, 2018
Review by John Campbell

In an opera company the opera is chosen and auditions for the singers follow. At the Governor's School for the Arts, Vocal Music Department Chair Alan Fischer chooses operas based on the student voices he has available. Currently there is a large pool of young women students, several with outstanding voices and only a few young men. In Dido and Aeneas and Suor Angelica there are twenty-three roles for women and only two for men.

We learned from Mr. Fischer that he considers Suor Angelica the finest of Puccini's one-act operas with its depth of pathos and adventurous vocal writing. The students available this year offered him a rare chance to stage the opera. He also staged it in August, 2014 with Tidewater Opera Initiative with local and professional singers.

Puccini's opera was set in an era when good families punished a daughter for getting pregnant out of wedlock and protected the family honor by shipping her off to a convent. Sister Angelica, who gave birth seven years before, has not heard a word from her titled family since.

Puccini uses his great skill to write beautiful religious music for the young nuns as well as the playful tunes of their interactions early in the opera.

Two singers sang the most demanding role, that of Sister Angelica: Shannon Crowley on the Saturday night performance we attended and Juliet Ortiz on Friday and Sunday. The other cast members were the same for the three-day run. The Mistress of the Novices was Kennedy Stone and the Monitor was Hanna Ramsbottom, both responsible for the smooth running of the life of the convent for the other ten singers.

We see cloister arches and a fountain with a life-size statue of the Virgin illuminated by the setting sun on three evenings each year. We meet the nuns as they go about their daily routines of gardening and singing. The music was played on electronic pianos by Oksana Lutsyshyn and Kelly Vaughan who added flute and other instrumental tones in music of the sweet melancholy of an early fall sunset.

Created by Emma Giometti, the other pivotal role is the Principessa, Angelica's aunt who visits her to have her sign away her inheritance because her sister is about to marry. In intense conversation Angelica learns that her young son has died of a fever. In a heavenly vision she believes her son is calling her and takes poison. Remembering that taking your own life is a mortal sin, she begs the Virgin Mary for mercy. In the final scene her little boy comes and gently takes her hand, leading her to paradise.

The opening opera was Henry Purcell's Dido and Aeneas, with Lindsay Marcus as Dido, the Queen of Carthage who has had a sad life as a widow until the Trojan warrior and his men are shipwrecked there. Belinda (Reann Nichols) and the Second Woman (Nairobi King) bring Dido and Aeneas together and they fall in love. The power-hungry Sorceress (Elissa Dresdner) and her witches (Gemauria Fennell and Morgan Royal-Hartman) plot Dido's downfall. They conjure up a spirit disguised as the God Mercury (Gabrielle Pinkney) who instructs Aeneas (Donte Thompson, March 11 & Gabriel Brown, March 10) that he must be on his way to found the new Troy (Rome). Aeneas chooses duty over love and Dido is once again deeply sad. She takes her own life and as she dies she sings the famous aria When I am Laid in Earth ("Remember me but forget my fate"). A triumphant Sorceress assumes the throne.

For both operas the costumes and sets were excellent and the singing was exciting. Jaelin Mitchell was stage manager and Stephen Cook prepared the excellent chorus. Brooke Jones did a terrific job with hair and make-up. The sets by Elwood Robinson were elegant and his lighting was very effective. As usual Mr. Fischer was able to inspire the best possible performances from each individual. Especially effective was the axial symmetry in Dido with the principals in the center and ranks of singers on each side who switched from Dido's courtiers to the Sorceress' minions by simply pulling up their hoodies to cover their heads.

GSA and JMU Meet for Mahler Symphony No. 2
April 21, 2018, Sandler Center; April 22, 2018, Forbes Center, Harrisonburg, VA
Review by John Campbell

Gustav Mahler (1860-1911) completed nine symphonies. His Symphony No. 2 requires enormous resources—a huge orchestra, alto and soprano soloists, chorus and organ. By coming together, Norfolk's Governor's School for the Arts (61 instruments, including some faculty) and Chorus (41 voices) and James Madison University Orchestra (73) and Chorus (75) members had the weight and precision to bring this most breathtaking and moving, late-romantic masterpiece to life.

The program opened with choral music. War and Peace were written by Ivo Antognini and sung by the Madison Singers and the JMU Chorale, conducted by Dr. Jo-Anne van der Vat-Chromy and accompanied by oboist Dr. Jeanette Zyko, also of JMU. The layers of vocal sound of War spoke about darkness, storm, love and hate and pride in the lover's eye. Peace was lyrical with an even sound like the blue hills they sang of. Both songs from Irish Trilogy have texts by Irish poets. The author of War, Francis Ledwidge, died in World War I. Eva Gore-Booth wrote Peace.

Mahler's second symphony, with its epic theme of death and resurrection, is presented in heaven-storming style with a frame of reference that is vast, stretching from the masses of the Renaissance to marching songs of rural soldiers. Giant structures are built-up, reach to the heavens, then suddenly crumble. Natural spaces are invaded by sloppy country dances and belligerent marches (to paraphrase Alex Ross).

Jeffrey Phelps of GSA conducted the first movement—a tone poem that represented the funeral of the hero from Mahler's Symphony No. 1 over a twenty minute time span. This massive and unusual movement with a sharp contrast between the funeral march and the hymn-like second theme set the tone for the entire symphony. The other four movements were conducted by Foster Beyers, JMU Director of Orchestras. The Andante movement offered leisurely, never rushed, lyrically bold waves of sound from plucked strings. This was followed by the quicker scherzo with a lilt in the rhythm and little, nervous percussion interjections and raucous brass. In the fourth movement the pace deliberately slows and the travails of the dark night of the soul are swept away with a sense of glee as mezzo soprano Cecelia McKinley sang Urlicht (Primeval Light) in its original German with commanding power and lyric beauty.

The novice audience clapped a bit before the orchestra overwhelmed them with a huge sonic outburst. After a significant pause you could hear the faint offstage horns in a spacious and haunting evocation of nature. The last trumpet awakening the dead follows, calling all to judgment. In the awful silence that follows we seem to hear a distant nightingale. Ever so quietly and gently the chorus sings of resurrection and eternal life and out of this soprano Shelly Milam's voice emerges with a message of reassuring love. The male chorus sings with power followed by the lyricism of the women. Bells of joy ring out and all join in the exuberant conclusion.

The audience's reaction was also exuberant as Conductors Phelps and Beyers acknowledged the chorus, vocalists and organist Stephen Coxe, GSA Artistic Director. Stephen Cook took a bow for preparing the GSA chorus as did Dr. van der Vat-Chromy for the JMU chorus.